Homeland Discourse The German Case

Transcription

1 Homeland Discourse The German Case Michael Daxner International Relations Online Working Paper Series, 2013/01 Abstract: Homeland Discourse is a translation from German Heimatdiskurs. We have introduced this new term into a theory on Societies of Interventions. This neologism has a few relatives in other languages but claims originality insofar as it is inseparably linked to both: the theory of interventions and the fact that societies in those countries that send troops into military interventions develop a specific and powerful discourse with a strong impact on politics and culture. Our main assumption is that Homeland Discourse has become influential to political decisions and the mindset of countries that are engaged in military operations out of area. Keywords: Heimatdiskurs, Homeland Discourse, military intervention, Afghanistan, Bundeswehr, Germany Institut für Sozialwissenschaften Abteilung für Internationale Beziehungen und Europäische Integration

2 2013 Michael Daxner Michael Daxner (2013): Homeland Discourse The German Case, International Relations Online Working Paper, 2013/01, December 2013, Stuttgart: University of Stuttgart. URL: ISSN The International Relations Online Working Paper series is intended to enhance scholarly as well as public debate on international politics and European issues. It invites authors contributing to current debates in International Relations and European Studies in theoretically innovative ways or by the use of inventive qualitative or quantitative research methods. Interdisciplinary contributions on important international or EU-related issues are also very welcome. The International Relations Online Working Paper Series is published by the Department of International Relations and European Integration at the University of Stuttgart. Papers are available in electronic format only and can be downloaded at Layout and language editing by Elena Rinklef. Issued by Prof. Dr. Cathleen Kantner Institute for Social Science Department of International Relations and European Integration University of Stuttgart Breitscheidstr Stuttgart, Germany Tel: +49 (0) 711 / Fax: +49 (0) 711 / Kontakt: 2

3 The Author Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Michael Daxner is a senior researcher at the Otto-Suhr-Institut für Politikwissenschaft at the Freie Universität Berlin. He is a Senior Fellow at Berghof Conflict Research (2009) and project director within the collaborative research program SFB 700 "Governance in Räumen begrenzter Staatlichkeit" at the FU Berlin since

4 Contents 1. A RESEARCH REPORT A Starting Point 5 2. INTERVENTION AND HOMELAND Framework, Intuitions and Concepts Toward a Concept of Interventions Homeland and Heimat Homeland Discourse and Media The present situation EXAMPLES AND PRECEDENTS Archeology of a Discourse September PRELIMINARY CONCLUSIONS Critique Comparative Research, centered on the United States Politics Personal Résumé 35 BIBLIOGRAPHY 36 4

5 1. A Research Report 1 This is a research report, or inception essay. I present the preliminary findings of an ongoing occupation with a discourse the Homeland Discourse (HD) that has become an offspring of dealings with military interventions and the German participation in two major interventions, Kosovo and Afghanistan. While interventions have become a significant part of research and political controversies both in international relations and national reflection, the discourse linking the two dimensions has been barely investigated. I shall argue that Germany is a special case in this context. This article is an English summary of our research activities that were directed for obvious reasons towards a German public. In late 2012, a first major publication provided insights, assumptions and preliminary results (Daxner & Neumann, 2012: 13f., 46ff.). Much of the following is based on this book; at the same time, I am trying to explain to non- German readers the specific context, why HD is a German case. This article has one obvious problem: many of the striking examples that we have collected over time are written in German or refer to an explicit German public. It would not have made much sense to present them here at length without a detailed interpretation beyond translation. This will make the essay somewhat prim and less colorful than it should be. 1.1 A Starting Point 1989 was a decisive year for Germans and their societies. It also decisively changed the narratives of German post-war history. For once, Germany and the world were in tune, if only for a moment. A so-called peace dividend was on the horizon. But the world has changed after Instead of a bipolar confrontation of two dominant camps, we live in a multi-polar globalized situation in which many actors play diverse roles with increasing elements of global domestic policy. It is true that after the end of the bipolar confrontation, traditional wars have become fewer than before; it is also true that humanitarian interventions, in combination with missions under Chapter VII of the UN Charta or the Responsibility to Protect (R2P), have gained in significance. They have become normal. This is also reflected in scholarly and political controversies about such interventions and the limits and limitations of R2P. After the de-colonization period and the effects of post-colonialism, it is fair to assume that the normative legitimacy of any intervention, foremost military interventions under humanitarian aspects, has grown, while (neo) realist justifications of such interventions encounter more resistance within 1 I wish to thank Hannah Neumann, MA, for valuable contributions and discussions; and to Robert Clifford Mann and Ilja Sperling for substantial support editing this paper. 5

6 the intervening societies. There are many differences in the ways expeditionary military interventions are perceived and judged in the intervening societies. In all this, Germany has a role. Whether that role is acquired or attributed by other powers, if it is wanted or if it is unwillingly accepted, those are questions that I will not discuss at length in this article. But my supposition is that Germany has changed under the impact of its participation in out-of-area interventions. 2. Intervention and Homeland This research is about military or humanitarian interventions and their relations to national mindsets. The question about the degree and intensity of awareness of out-of-area engagements is not trivial for a society s consciousness. This implies also a critical review of our own research process that is not only born out of the slow and systematic flow of normal science, but has been driven by experiences from intervention practices, and from increasing doubts in the adequacy of the routine critique of ideologies on the level of the international system. In other words, some of the concepts have emerged only during our investigations that have started with the paradigm of societies of intervention. It is therefore work in progress. However, the epistemological introspection, asking how do we know what we know?, shall accompany most of the following considerations Framework, Intuitions and Concepts Four years ago, the term Heimatdiskurs ( homeland discourse, HD) had just 5 entries in a Google search (Google.de, April 2009); they all were linked to ethnographic studies; four years later, (13 June 2013), there are 1870 entries, most of them related to our neologism and its context. This can be seen as a scientific success but HD may also be regarded as an explicative term referring to a phenomenon increasingly affecting the public mindset 2 for which there is no adequate term yet established. Homeland refers to countries that are actively engaged in participating in military interventions, irrespective of mandate, type and duration. There is a broad variance with regard to the character of both the participation and the intervention. Participation can reach from checkbook-diplomacy to the deployment of large 2 Today, on 15 August 2013, we find 1830 entries, similar to the findings of June 2013; there are over 6 m entries for Homeland discourse in the English version, the first one referring to our research in German language (!) - which shows the indirect manipulation by search engines - but then a long list of related terms that are not connected with our research appear, before there are numerous English reference to HD. 6

7 military detachments; and the type of intervention can range from a one-sided invasion (Iraq) to humanitarian interventions under the Responsibility to Protect (R2P). However, our approach has narrowed the scope on humanitarian interventions and military components. Thus, HD would apply to a country that is sending troops into an (ongoing) intervention or supporting its start. Such countries will be called intervener(s), while the people in the intervened country are termed as the intervened (Michael Daxner, 2010b; Fortna, 2008: 5). Fortna also uses the terms peacekeepers and (the) peacekept respectively. We have introduced the term the intervened in the course of building a research team on the Culture of Interventions. This needs an explanation about the gradual unfolding of our terminology. In 2006, I started systematic research into military assisted interventions. My tenure in Kosovo (UNMIK as Principal International Officer for Education and Higher Education) had already instigated thoughts about an anthropology of interventions; after the beginning of my research and advisory activities in Afghanistan (2003), this idea consolidated, and in 2006, I founded a working group on the Culture of Interventions. With a set of assumptions for the analysis of societies and cultures of interventions, we organized a little conference in Potsdam (2008), the outcome of which was a book (Bonacker, Free, Zürcher, & Daxner, 2010) and a nucleus of researchers focused on specific aspects of societal change through intervention. Of course, analyzing the relationship between interveners and the intervened was not new, but it appeared to be novel under the aspect of the emergence of a society of intervention, i.e. a new type of society that is not just a mix between elements of the societies of the interveners and the intervened. While we originally started from the culture of intervention, this segment became only a part, though a significant one, of a broader construction of intervention theory. Frankly speaking, this is a theory in the making: some of its main variables must yet be tested (see below). In observing both the effect of the Kosovo and the Afghanistan interventions on the mindset of the German people we were quick at hand with one major assumption: the culture of intervention is decisive for a discourse that is powerful in the interveners countries (in each of them distinctly), and this discourse has a major impact on political decisions and is guiding individual actions on all levels of the intervention. In a very brief anticipation of our arguments, we can say that it is as important to learn what happens between interveners and intervened as to analyze how this interaction is being perceived by either group, interveners and the intervened. Since we come from the interveners side and are not ethnologists, we primarily analyze the discourses in the interveners society concerning an intervention, but we also try to develop ways to cooperate with the intervened so as to learn about their discourses as well. From experience we should assume that the intervention discourse develops earlier in the interveners society; but over time we expect to find two separate and parallel HD which are 7

8 interdependent but not fully congruent as HD starts to gain ground in the country of the intervened. Therefore, it will be worthwhile to investigate the trajectory of HD, commuting between both societies. While the anticipation and imagination of the intervened society is structuring all elements of an intervention from the beginning, the perception of the intervention by the intervened normally needs some time to develop. There is certain feedback between the perceptions of the interveners societies and those of the intervened. But this is a technical detail from experience; it plays a major role in intervention theory, but less so in HD studies concentrating on the interveners societies. Why don t we call the discourse simply intervention discourse? Because it is not born within the intervention, but in a society perceiving, observing, and judging the intervention from a base that we will call homeland. The obvious questions do not come out of the blue: are we at war? What are we doing there? Do we need to go there with all our problems here? What about our soldiers killed, our soldiers who are fathers, brothers or sisters? These and more questions and their answers are constitutive for a discourse that we call HD. It is related to the intervention discourse, but not congruent with it. Within this concept, this is the definition of HD: HD comprises all discursive practices and strategies that refer to legitimacy, recognition and assessment of policies and the engagement of troops out of (national or alliance) area. It is a stream of knowledge without distinct authors and with uneven authority. HD effectively structures the public mindset, the interaction between media and the public, the backstage of political decisions and the policies of legitimacy for out of area engagement and global alliances; in the end, HD is, of course, not restricted to military and humanitarian missions, as could be shown with regard to the fields of international justice, indirect interventions through boycotts and restrictions of movement or support to rebellions and insurgency. In this essay, I shall use the narrower definition as focused on the military humanitarian intervention. HD influences the mindsets, actions and (pre)conscious orientations of interveners, and with some delay, of the intervened. With the deployment of troops, HD begins to work on the interveners, and not only directly on soldiers or officers. The deferment with which HD arrives in the intervened society is a special target of future research. It will be necessary to learn from the intervened about their HD, but according to some assumptions on societies of intervention, there will be a broad field of overlapping phenomena between the HD in the intervened society and in the countries of the interveners. And, certainly, there will be a semantic difference between the two notions that must be taken account of. 8

9 We have started to consider the German case for more than one reason: it is the country from which we can observe the intervention with its remarkable variance; it is also the state where research into interventions and the effects of German policies over there (in Kosovo, Afghanistan and other out-of-area deployments) affect scientific considerations at the interface between analysis and policy; and it is the society with a rather special account to all out-ofarea military engagement, which allows to dissect elements of a special that can be tested for their usability in a broader context. In the case of Germany, HD developed on foreign and defense policies in the context of the Kosovo (1999 -) and Afghanistan (2001 -) missions; it also refers to the context of global domestic policy, the War on Terror, the battle against pirates etc. Many forerunners of HD can be found in colonial and post-colonial times and societies. Germany is in a special role insofar as its post-wwii history is shaped by a long-term backstage role in international politics (this is true for the two Germanys until 1989, the FRG and GDR). Since the country never had a long and intensive colonial history, which definitively ended in 1918, unlike the United Kingdom, France and others, the colonial past is relatively far away; however, there are still a few deep layers of reminiscences that go back either to colonial realities or to the short period of German efforts to keep up with Imperialism ( ). More important is the total reorientation after the defeat of 1945 and the subsequent so-called pacifist mindset that underwent several changes till the end of the Cold War 3. The united Germany after the Cold War had to learn swiftly that a powerful economic and political player could not abstain from positioning itself in the changing global policies (cf. a traditional approach by Maull (Koenigs, 2011; Maull, 2012), while more recent disciplinary coding always refers to international relations instead of foreign affairs or foreign policy : cf. (Drinkwater, 2005) 4. See Karl Deutsch 1968 and 1988: International Relations; Kenneth Waltz: International Politics 1979; Peter Calvocoresse: World Politics, are typical landmarks in terminology); the development of alliances, such as NATO, and the emergence of a set of new strong powers, such as India, Brazil, South Africa, and foremost China, challenged German foreign policy that focused on complacent economic expansionism without too many global political ambitions. For a long time it seemed impossible that Germany would even discuss if it should participate in a war. But to whom did it seem impossible? It was very clear for the Western Allies that 3 We should distinguish between a commonly shared pacifist mentality that had many sources and resources; and an explicit political peace-movement that had some more or less pacifist factions, while other groups linked their peace-approaches with the liberation and decolonization movements or were ostensibly followers of the anti-western strategies in the Cold War. As a consequence, there are numerous interpretations and explanations of this narrative that has undergone significant changes after It is not trivial to bring this aspect in context with HD as both politics and P&C research are using it as one of their baselines. 4 Acknowledgments to Ingo Peters from OSI who directed my attention to Alfred Zimmern and his early accounts to changes in paradigms of International Relations. 9

10 this country must now take over a much bigger share of responsibility. Responsibility was used as a euphemism for participation in active military politics rather than continuing the traditional checkbook-diplomacy. A recent memoir of the former Special Representative of UNAMA (United Nations Assistance Mission In Afghanistan), Tom Koenigs, clearly names the new dilemma (Koenigs, 2011): Do we make Peace or are we at War? In the beginning of our research and conceptualizing HD, we decided to review our disciplinary status: the HDsegment of research does not automatically belong to traditional Peace and Conflict-Studies, but is integral part of a theory on military or humanitarian intervention and conflict. I want to make a short digression into broader social science: Peace in P&C-Studies has a normative element that may be part of HD, but the field of HD is conflict and thus analytical and empirical. This is a much stronger theoretical base as it may seem at a first glance: conflict theory as an ingredient of discourses that are formative for public opinion and political decisions and actions is not so frequently recognized as an analytical tool that makes these opinions and decisions comprehensible. Normally, the public does not argue along the lines of any theory; conflict theory in the tradition of Simmel, Coser, Dahrendorf, Elwert, on the other side, would like to explain social dynamics also by an ongoing emergence and resolution of conflicts. In the tradition of Galtung and others, it is attractive to make peace-research an autonomous branch within social sciences, but I hold that it can only be fully understood as a part of conflict research. This is certainly not the theme of this essay, but there is certainly also a special importance for the peace -element in P&C-studies, given the special sensitivity of Germany coping with its past. The normative element thus has occupied research territory in some cases that should have been reserved for empirical investigations, with a detrimental side effect: whenever you do research on sensitive issues like war, intervention, occupation, drones etc. or draw attention to the fate of soldiers in combat, the suspicion of research improving war is not far. The nationwide debate about a so called civilian clause (Zivilklausel) 5 in academic research is one example, very typical for Germany. This has a negative effect on all kinds of investigation and scientific representation. Sometimes, preconceived expectations of the supposed normative agenda of intervention research put an obstacle against substantiated communication within P&C research and between the academic disciplines. However, I think it is prudent to react sensitively to this observation, in particular in cases where 5 The advocates of a Zivilklausel argue that scientific research is only legitimate if it serves peace, and research on war and conflict, among other topics, does neither serve peace nor prevention and is unethical and politically incorrect. The most extreme speakers for this movement even demand censorship of applications and grants for such projects that are under the verdict of disserving peace. Apart from my arguments on academic freedom my question was how all the peaceful activists have learned about conflicts and wars if not from research: The problem of ambiguity of war is still marginalized. For Researchers, the Baecker paradigm of ambiguity is the most important condensed statement against a positivistic or normative view: (Baecker, 2002) in Daxner and Neumann (2012), p. 46f. The campaign for a civilian clause is a periodically revived offspring from a state-socialist peace movement with origins in the Cold War and an inclination towards Soviet and post-soviet interpretations. 10

11 HD is being explained to an academic public that immediately is likely to want a personal position to the objects of HD, i.e. war and combat. Meanwhile, the end of the Cold War also brought new frames for global policies: The Responsibility to Protect (R2P), the policy of Human Security, and the increasing need to involve military in regime change instead of conquest or colonization produced a climate in which the idea of potentially taking part in interventions, coined as humanitarian ones, became possible and real 6. As a consequence, research on HD emerged from a need to understand a country s engagement in interventions and world-wide operations, even if its territorial integrity has not been affected and its political system has not been challenged. HD analysis aims at uncovering in the mindset of a people those assumptions and perceptions that the analysis of politics alone cannot easily anticipate and structure. A good example is the statement by former Defense Secretary Struck in 2004: Germany s security is being defended in the Hindukush. The source, a government bulletin, became blurred and confused, and soon security was frequently replaced by freedom. This is how HD works (Daxner 2009) Toward a Concept of Interventions We defined HD as an integral part of the theory on societies of intervention. The research team Cultures of Intervention (ASIK, now International Research Network on Cultures of Intervention, COINet) at the University of Oldenburg organized a congress in Potsdam, in 2008, when the theory was presented for the first time and the network of interested scholars got a decisive push (cf. p. 2). The notion of a theory should be moderately clarified as a theory in the making or a theory-based concept. For this qualitative and constructivist approach, it is rather difficult to develop testable hypotheses and define mid-range consequences from the theory. We dare speak of a theory of intervention nevertheless, because it is a concept clearly different from both policy oriented structural theories of interventions mainly in the traditional liberal state-building frame and from the actor-centered approaches whose actions are mainly located on the society level. While the first is concentrated on the state as the central focus of 6 There is a related issue concerning motives and practices of nations supplying troops for peacekeeping missions for the UN. (Just think of HD in Bangla Desh or Pakistan, both being significant suppliers with troops (cf. Daxner and Schrade 2012). 7 I first mentioned this phenomenon in a lecture at the University of Giessen in early At the time of my lecture I had found more than ten different dates for the origin of the sentence, ranging from 2002 to 2009, and quite a few versions. Today, Google shows more than entries and a rather incomprehensible multitude of comments and quotations in context (viewed 20/9/2011). The original statement by secretary Struck was given at the Bundestag on 11/03/2004 (BT 15/8599), but there are similar versions existing, even from before that date. Certainly, the freedom -variety was not an original statement. 11

12 all considerations, the second is outcome-oriented with regard to the aims and means of the interveners progress, with the reactions of the intervened as dependent variable. Normally, intervention theory is state-oriented and considers the effects of a military intervention on the nation intervened. This includes questions of legitimacy, and the limitations of interventions by the sheer resistance of the country intervened. We hold that most of the state-oriented intervention theories concentrate on the outcome, defined by the official and unofficial purposes of the intervention: e.g. gaining a stable ally, opening a free market, reducing violence by institution building, etc.; the intervention itself is a black-box that is sought to become transparent by the time of its progress. Such analysis can be considered necessary, but not sufficient to explain what the effects and impact on post-intervention societies will be (including both interveners and intervened). In order to demonstrate how important this aspect is, let us just look at the major part of literature, where we find the terms post-war and postconflict more often applied to an ongoing intervention, while post-intervention is used only for completed interventions or attribute the post to a period of time after the moment of intervention, i.e. the arrival of the intervention force. This kind of arguments can be more easily projected on states, governments, and people in power on a system level. On the level of lifeworld, the diverse post-notions are less clearly observable. But we can assume that the perception of people on the level of life-world would have genuine terms of describing the effects of an intervention, while they may also consider themselves as non-affected : life has not changed for them and will not change. We have decided to use a society-oriented approach. This does not mean that we ignore state and statehood, but we do not necessarily consider them the only framework for our research target; instead, societies continue to exist and to change permanently, when states emerge and disappear. We apply this distinction in the sense used by Migdal s book Strong Societies and Weak States (Migdal, 1988). For our purpose, another aspect is especially interesting. An intervention, launched by any actor, - state, agency, organization -, will affect society. Even in the case of an immediate regime change, where only the state and statehood are affected, the impact is on the people, i.e. on society. The concept, on which further considerations are based, reads as follows: 1. Each intervention produces a society of intervention. A society of intervention is one whose structures are basically determined by elements brought by the intervention. It implicates an irreversible change in social order and communication. Conflicts stemming from the intervention and developing in the course of an emerging society of intervention are not causally linked to the root conflicts that originally were the reason for the intervention. 12

13 2. All societies of intervention are structurally similar and comparable, notwithstanding their diverse cultural embedding. Irrespective of the reasons and causes of an intervention, it will bring some features that appear under any circumstance. This does not contradict the respective impact of cultural contextualization of social phenomena. (The interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan do not share many roots, but the social phenomena in the course of the countries being intervened are quite similar). 3. Societies of intervention are characterized by dynamic relations between interveners and the intervened. These relations may lead to partial fusion, to collusive situations and to the development of new social structures; the latter are no simple compromises among interveners and the intervened. The new structures tend to be irreversible. 4. The system-level of these new societies of intervention is in a particular tension with the life-world of the intervened. This directly affects the system of rules (institutions) in such societies and all aspects of governance also on microsocial level (conflict-regulation, tradition, values, habitus). The main reason for this tension is the fact that interveners normally start to focus on and deal with the system-level, while life-world and micro-social structures are neglected Each society of intervention develops its specific culture of intervention (of course, albeit often diachronically, both with the intervened and the interveners,). This follows from the specificities of changes in society: matters of public vs. private, gender issues, value orders and habitus are becoming relevant. 6. Shaping the relation between interveners and intervened, the Homeland Discourse of the interveners plays a decisive role. (This statement will be explained in the following sections of this article; it is, indeed, its stimulus). We are well aware that the diverse statements in this concept may all be plausible but are not always hypotheses that can easily be empirically tested and integrated into a strong theory. However, the core proposition of the society of intervention seems to be a solid enough assumption as to reconcile the cultural conflicts and the political conflicts during and after an 8 Some of the strongly empirical research of the Project C9: Hearts and Minds, Security and Development in North-East Afghanistan, within the SFB 700 research unit of the Free University Berlin, reflects this aspect in concrete longitudinal investigations. 13

14 intervention cf. (Croissant, Wagschal, Schwank, & Trinn, 2009). It is obvious that the semantics of intervention play a significant role: intervention is a generic term, and, at the same time, a cipher for war, invasion, occupation, legitimate or illegitimate acting on declared or hidden interests. One of the big problems in research is the ambiguity between normative and empirical concepts of intervention. If something is declared humanitarian or peacekeeping, this is different from being coined as retribution or pre-emptive initiative serving the interveners national security interests. What you need here is a thorough inspection of texts and subtexts. Normally, the real/true interests in interventions are seldom expressed in the same clear manner as liberal-humanitarian justifications because these last have greater chances to gain legitimacy and approval, including for necessary financial resources. Thus, the concept of interventions can profit from critical discourse analysis for HD. And it can provide insights for this HD, as the intervention does not remain the black box that it appears to be in most political discourses. A further assumption that is yet to be tested is that people will understand intervention better within the semantics of occupation or postwar society, notwithstanding the differences. We can also claim that HD influences the mindsets, actions and (sub)conscious orientations of interveners, and with some delay, of the intervened. With the deployment of troops, HD begins to work on the interveners, and not only directly on soldiers or military le. Since interveners rarely originate from only one society (or nation), the different HD of several intervener societies interact in significant ways. This can easily be tested in the different uses of history and collective symbols by Germans and Americans in recollecting 9/11 and thus shaping the respective HD (Ackermann, 2011; Leffler, 2011; Weinberger, 2011; Wiggershaus, 2011). More important is the fact that different HD compete with each other or create hybrid discourses as they impact the actions of interveners. If one nation expects heroes, while the other represents a post-heroic society, then the communication between the two national discourse actors (soldiers, but also civilian agents) becomes idiosyncratic Homeland and Heimat When we coined HD as Heimatdiskurs, we put much effort into inventing a term that was supposed to be ironic and pathetic at the same time, and would certainly attract the attention of culturally and politically aware people 9. Irony and pathos as modes in literary and political criticism are needed when certain terms that are used in everyday language tend to become flat. Heimat in German has too much of a context to be used without immediate second 9 The modes of irony and pathos are essential ingredients of literary theory. 14

15 thoughts. Heimat is something different from fatherland and motherland and homeland: Its specific scientific and ideological connotation in Germany is inseparably linked with the notion of belated nationhood (Plessner, 1992) and with a patriotism that for a long time had an imaginary culture-nation instead of nation-state as perspective, thus fostering an ungrounded nationalism 10 (Breger, Link, & Parr, 2011; kulturrevolution, 2011). To a certain extent, Germany always did and still does share such tendencies with other societies; but many other societies changed their ideas of nationhood, since their nationalism and patriotism had been given a national, i.e. nation-state, frame much earlier. But Heimat is certainly not unique, when it comes to popular culture, and continues to be a strong reservoir for resentment and prejudice, including Kitsch or even trash. One particular aspect related to the idea of Heimat is migration; it constitutes the difference between here and there. Another aspect is the war out of area. It has always needed a strongly appealing mission for legitimizing the sons of the Heimat to fight in Russia or Africa, unless soldiers were simply pressed into the army. HD produces certain elements of this legitimizing, both critical or positively. We give special attention to the ongoing transformation of the German Bundeswehr into an intervention army. This is another chapter of the changes in German nationhood, and only partially linked to the out-of-area policies; however, the transformation of the national defense forces would not have happened so fast without the Afghan experience. Before I continue to detail the dimensions of HD, we should look at the semantic components of the term Homeland-Discourse in its English version. This term is both a translation of Heimatdiskurs and an interpretation of HD in Anglophone countries, especially in the U.S.. Of course, the term Homeland has its own linguistic history 11. I do not want to explain the extended history of the term, e.g. by referring to South Africa and the colonial past. In a narrow interpretation, Homeland has become a keyword after 9/11. The Department of Homeland Security combines two significant terms as part of a powerful discourse after the attack against the U.S. on its own territory. It contains spatial and security issues in a national perspective. Homeland has become an ambiguous generic term in the sense of Kuehn s research 12 because it combines positive and negative associations, especially when compliance is sought beyond the normative call upon patriotism or simply service to the nation. The German term Heimat is less associated with a spatial dimension and points more to the specific character of the post-world War II German state and society, for both of whom interventions out of area 10 The most uncompromising analysis of this field has been for many years the journal kulturrevolution, with the important discourse analyst and theoretician Jürgen Link as a main contributor. HD is in the center of issue #60 (2011), but frequently referred to in several other issues. 11 Wikipedia is very interesting as a primary source because of its long list of associated keywords. In this respect, many characteristics of the German Heimat, as described, apply. However, in the entry Homeland_Security there is no account to the terminology of Homeland (Wikipedia). 12 This is an anticipation of Florian Kühn s (Humboldt University) studies on ambiguity in peace and conflict contexts. He attacks concepts that appear to be without alternative options. 15

16 are not at all traditional and embedded in the narratives of Germany after However, there is another underlying notion of Heimat that belongs to philosophy rather than social science: before the German statebuilding in the 19 th century gained momentum, Heimat was an idealistic term referring to an ideal concept (18 th and 19 th centuries), or even became an utopian perspective in a revolutionary sense, mainly with the eminent philosopher Ernst Bloch (Bloch, 1995; Daxner, 1984) His ideas on Heimat as a utopian future space of democracy and perennial desires has influenced parts of the 1968 movements, during which many presentday politicians in Germanydeveloped their political ideas and concepts. The U.S. has an unbroken history of interventions, but always directed out of area, if this area means the territory of the state. In the re-writing of U.S. history ten years after 9/11, new narratives become visible that clearly give HD more weight than ever before; 9/11 is unique, but the following interventions are not (Leffler, 2011) 13. The changing of narratives is a characteristic of all HD. The strong ethical aspects in HD are a worldwide feature; for the U.S., the post-9/11 context is significant (Danner, 2011), in other countries HD focus often on the problem of ethical legitimacy (Youngs, 2010). In the light of the recent NSA spying scandals, homeland gets new connotations, including for allies of the U.S. in ongoing interventions. Back to the German case: In peaceful post-wwii Germany Heimat has become a word either ridiculed or interpreted close to political incorrectness. But the more the term War has become common for interventions, it has incorporated a multitude of associations with the reality of war: veterans, casualties, dead soldiers, the issue of learning to kill 14 (Spiegel 47/2006) and other related terms slowly trickle into everyday language and mindsets. War has become a trigger-term, evoking very significant reactions on all levels of public opinions and political decisions. HD has become caught in the dialectics of a very specific German aspect of the context: The post-wwii narrative of German foreign policy has been based on a rather unanimously accepted principle of War never again (Espenhans 2012, Cf. also the paradigmatic works of Dan Diner on the ruptures in civilization (Zivilisationsbruch) 2008 et al., where he discusses the changes in narratives of post-war history. For the magisterial post-war history see Tony Judt (2006) 15. Today, public perception, political decisions and even research have to acknowledge that there is war in which our soldiers, i.e. the possessive collective imagination of the German soldiers, are entangled; this support to our soldiers implies a kind 13 This is an important detail in intervention theory. Even if the constellation of each intervention is unique, the intervention itself will be comparable to others. 14 First mentioned in the weekly DER SPIEGEL 47/2006 (cover). In Google-search there are ca entries as of recently (viewed 9/20/2011), and still there are more<<. 5,7 m (viewed 9/10/2013). The aspect of getting a real army has become virulent recently, when Germany dissolves it main Afghan camp in Kunduz (October 2013) 15 By the way, this may be one reason, why German conflict research has been baptized Peace and Conflict Studies, which under scientific rules is slightly illogical, but bears the normative priority of peace : this preference of peace to conflict corresponds also to a strong mistrust of state-sponsored peace-research (Leithäuser, 1969) Leithäuser provides one of the earliest accounts this context. 16

17 of involuntary Yes, even if one still does not want to be identified with a nation for which war is normal (Baecker, 2002). For social scientists in Germany, this is a real challenge because many critics argue that research that acknowledges war as a reality investigates interventions in order to improve them, thus lacking the normative guideline of peace present in concepts such as peace-keeping or peace-building. In other words: if you do research on war and conflict without the immediate purpose being directed to peace, you get into arguments. Baecker and others, including our HD approach, want to demonstrate that dealing with war as an object of investigation is ambivalent, whether you want to support the military actions or plea for a peaceful alternative. In other societies, this critique is less common. In any case, the negligence of the analysis of HD would weaken the analytical ability of scholars and decision makers alike and would leave too much to the unconscious elements of HD undisclosed Homeland Discourse and Media All communication is also about translation. Given the British and/or American attitudes towards the Germans, forged by so many experiences from hot and cold wars, partnership and alienation, it is no surprise that a German term for homeland, fatherland, motherland etc. would be difficult to translate and, at the same time, transport particles from numerous discourses that might make for the context. At a very early stage of our research we decided to embed our media analysis into a broader analytical concept that would comprise the tools of hermeneutics, critique of ideologies and critical discourse analysis. How to apply and combine these tools is a methodological question that deserves an extra description. We have based our work on a few authors and concepts that can be compared with each other: we call them soft or applied critical discourse analysis, which simply means they are less rigid than approaches that seek a direct applicationof Foucault s theories (e.g. in krr 64/2013). Ruth Wodak is an authority in this field (Wodak & Meyer, 2009), another one is Rainer Keller (Keller, 2004); here, it may suffice to say that the analysis of texts, images and audio information make obvious sense and the preliminary results justify an eclectic approach. In any case, we are not at the end of the methodological road, but it is also clear that we do not want to add directly to discourse theory. We find that it is very important to focus on certain themes in the context of the interventions and Germany s role in order to find out how the media is driven by HD. The extent of media involvement is significant for the relation between HD and politics. Its importance can be retrieved from the comparison to Portugal, where the Afghan intervention is not being debated 17

18 at all, although the country has been engaged there from the beginning. In a comparative approach, a CES workshop (Lisbon) and a research team from Marburg and Coimbra discussed the awareness in Portugal and Germany of the intervention in Afghanistan 16 : in Portugal there is either no evident HD of the intervention, or there is a strong unconscious awareness of it; the same is true for many East European members of NATO missions or coalitions of the willing. In Germany, HD is gaining increased importance on both dimensions of awareness and discussion. The topic becoming thematic is one meaning of a discourse. The strength of HD can be shown by its persistency and durability, and by the events that trigger bigger or lesser visibility. We have no intention to repeat and differentiate discourse theory and its application on the intervention issue to an extent that would create a meta-level of reflection. We reduce complexity insofar as we take the discursive level as the starting point of our investigation. Methodologically, it is interesting that starting with Foucault would be no surprise, but reconciling his discourse theory with analyses that are mainly based on his antagonist s Bourdieu s empirical and methodical work makes a lot of sense (Free, 2010); in the practice of analyzing texts, based on Jäger s praxeology (M. Jaeger & Jaeger, 2007) the results are at least satisfactory (Heinecke, 2011). The interface with stark critique of ideology can be seen in an exemplary comment on the reform of the German Bundeswehr (S. Jaeger, 2011). It is important to understand that our approach is not competing with critical media-analysis, while using some of the identical material and sources. Our interest is not primarily focused on what the media do with the elements of HD, but how within HD themes or media and laypersons and experts and politicians are being featured. We had several controversial debates when press-officers for some of the agencies involved claimed that they were making the themes and would not accept their own dependency on the discourses. Our second interest is the way strategies, tactics and new elements find their way back into HD, through media and other channels. A naïve approach would be comfortable to discover the signs of HD in the media and other communication that makes public opinions. But media analysis that is dearly needed barely gives answers to the questions about how the HD has found its way to media and public, and how it shapes media coverage, and finally how it impacts on political decisions shaping the course of the intervention. It is almost trivial to say that the media are as much driven by HD as they (partially) influence it; and that the consciousness by which the way of HD into the media and to the public can be investigated, is very limited. 16 Lisbon 9/13/2011, organized by Friedrich Ebert Foundation. 18

19 Martin Löffelholz (Löffelholz, 2007, 2004; Löffelholz, Trippe, & Hoffman, 2007, 2008) provides a comprehensive account of the achievements of media research towards understanding how the media reports on wars and how such reporting is shaped by external circumstances such as a professionalization of military communication, a continuing economization, journalistic routines and the introduction of real time reporting due to new communication technologies. But such research remains limited as it fails to explain why within all these changes certain events and spins are preferred over others. News values theory provides explanations for such questions and remains to be frequently consulted, especially in popular science. One example should be enough to show the difference between media analyses and our approach at this point. Central to the theory of news values is the aspect of reference to elite nations and persons 17. Events concerned with the rich, powerful, famous or infamous get more coverage than others. The fact whether an event is concerned with such actors or organizations can easily be coded and counted, but the underlying question of how an actor or an organization gained such fame or infamous reputation remains one to be answered by discourse analysis. The Taleban were not identical or congruent with the anti-soviet Djihadis; however, the question is important for the perception of the insurgents by the West: how did they come under influence from Al Qaeda? Why did they become an incarnation of evil as well, when it would have been sufficient to brand them as ruthless dictators during their rule after 1995? And how can we reconcile such apodictic labeling with the opinion that there is no way out without including the Taleban in the negotiation about the post-transition period. If we want to know how the Taleban enter the public awareness, even subconsciously, an analysis of HD and based on it and its underlying images and changing connotations is necessary. The images are often related to narratives that become powerful because they are mutually shared, national narratives in modification and multinational negotiation processes about the interpretation of global events, which again might rely on conflicting interpretations of such events. First approaches to take such underlying dynamics into account are promising, but comprehensive accounts uniting media analysis and discourse analysis with a focus on the German discussion are missing. It should be mentioned that further research in the field will include a turn to other media, e.g. digging deeper into the web. So far, we did not need to, because some significant discursive leaders were still in print media, but this likely to change. And other sections of non-print become important almost by exponential growth: movies, TV series, photo series and cartoons 18. In another extension of our work, we are just going to publish an anthology with 17 The origins of the news values theory interestingly lie in peace studies: (Galtung & Ruge, 1965). 18 I cannot even superficially touch this wide field of partly distorted and partly oppressed history. But in the course of our research we have found many accounts to special relations with Germany, based either on the Aryan myth (even Vaidik, from the Indian Council of Foreign Relations, used this account at a conference in Herat 2007); or on the antagonism between German and British policies towards the 19

20 individual contributions by both experts or persons with another distinguished role within HD. We shall call this book Germany in Afghanistan and try to conceptualize a reader against too short a half-life memory of the intervention The present situation Afghanistan as a theme of general interest has begun disappearing again. After the Bonn Conference of 2011 and the Tokyo Conference of 2012, the period of time after 2014, i.e. Transformation 19, (presidential elections and exit of combat troops) has become a main focus for politicians, but less so for the public. Many previous interventions have had a short half-life in public awareness. Afghanistan has been highlighted again after the decision to pull out when awareness was triggered by very particular events, e.g., the Conference in Bonn (5 December 2011) with the stark German role in it, or the absence of Pakistan at the same conference because of U.S. drone attacks on Pakistan military a few days before the event. If there is any debate about Afghanistan at all, then it is about what are our boys are still doing down there. These observations are not yet systematic, but they are showing the viewpoints under which we observe the situation. Becoming thematic means for the public: Does our intervention make any sense; has it made sense at any time? A nasty shortened explanation would be that the Afghans are disappearing from discourse, although they never really entered it if they weren t Taleban This short-cut is, of course, no joke, but one of the most common pattern among laypersons discussing the intervention. A very sublime subtext is the traditional tight relationship between Germany and Afghanistan throughout the 20 th century, both under the democratic and dictatorial rules in Germany. (We have not gone into this aspect, because until now we cannot see any effective region; or on the German models for King Amanullah s reform policies in the 1920s; or on the fact that Afghanistan had been the preferred target of German development aid before But this is clearly one of the research areas that must be better included into HD research. Affirmative overviews can be found at the regular country pages of the German Foreign Office or at (viewed 9/10/2013). Critical approaches on German self-perception are rare outside the out-of-area context. Cf. (kulturrevolution, 2011). In all cases, the contributions of ethnologists and anthropologists play a big role. In a public TV series Unser Krieg (Our War) (I) on 8/10/2013 ZDF), the special relations between Afghans and Germans were mentioned by a ranking military, regretting the deteriorated relations in the course of the intervention. 19 It is interesting that the wording, Transformation following Transition, did never cause a major controversy: Transition means handover of security and governance responsibility to the Afghans, and Transformation means what it says: the transformation of society and state. Implicitly, this transformation has never really taken place under the rules of intervention between 2001 and today Which, of course, is also not entirely true, because the society of intervention has changed many of its structures; however, an intentional transformation under afghan rule has not yet begun to root in society. 20

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